


The Bank Job

by Frea_O, mxpw999



Series: The Fatesverse [3]
Category: Chuck (TV)
Genre: Con Job, Dubai, Gen, Innuendo, Unrequited Love
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-12-30
Updated: 2012-11-06
Packaged: 2017-10-28 12:22:15
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 4
Words: 13,743
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/307835
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Frea_O/pseuds/Frea_O, https://archiveofourown.org/users/mxpw999/pseuds/mxpw999
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Sarah and Carina knock over a bank in Dubai, with surprising backup from the still-bunkerized Chuck. Or is that Mr. Wizard?</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Yin and Yang

**13 APRIL 2006  
THE DESERT JEWEL, SUITE 1802  
23:47 AST**

The amber liquid burned as it slid down her throat and settled in her midsection. She had lost track of how many shots she’d had. At the moment, she didn’t particularly care. As long as there was something still in the bottle, she’d drink whatever Carina gave her.

“A few more of these and you won’t be able to stop me when I try to have my way with you.”

Sarah merely rolled her eyes and held out her shot glass. She glared at Carina when the redhead hesitated to refill her glass, and shook the glass insistently in her friend’s face.

Carina sighed and took the hint. “So are you ever going to tell me what’s got your panties in such a bunch?”

“You know,” Sarah started to say, but she paused to take a drink. She wiped her mouth with the back of her hand. “I really hate that saying.”

Carina snorted and poured herself a shot.

Sarah raised a single finger. “For one thing, it’s sexist.” A second finger. “Another, it’s crude.” She peered really hard at her two fingers and abruptly added a third. “And what happens when you’re not wearing panties? What then, huh?”

Sarah watched Carina smirk faintly, her eyes crinkling in amusement. “Is that some kind of not-so-subtle hint?”

Sarah’s eyes widened. “What? No!” She groaned and placed her head on the table. “Why are we friends? All you think about is sex.”

“Yin and yang, dear.”

“I really don’t want to think about sex right now.”

“Ah,” Carina said. She capped the whiskey bottle and tossed it onto the couch behind her. Sarah let out a feeble protest as the bottle soared through the air, but made no move to scramble after it.

Frankly, she was busy waiting for the room to stop spinning. And then she could focus on things like moving.

“So this is about Bryce.”

Sarah inwardly smacked her forehead. She had walked right into that one. It really was true what they taught at the Farm: alcohol and secret keeping? Not a good mix.

“I don’t wanna talk about it.”

Carina shrugged and slid down until she was lying mostly horizontal on the thick carpet of the hotel room. She ran a hand through her hair and leaned on one elbow. She leveled a steady gaze at her and pursed her lips. “Okay, so then maybe we can discuss what you’re doing here instead of wherever the hell Bryce is.”

“I don’t wanna talk about that either.” Sarah hoped she wasn’t pouting, but all bets were off the table these days—had been for months.

It didn’t help that she was more than a little pissed about the CIA’s decision to toss her into the DEA’s lap. She thought it was ridiculous and unjustified. And she resented the implication. Bryce got to stay with the Agency. Bryce got to request a reassignment. Bryce got to have his choice of missions while the brass dealt with their little tiff. Was she or was she not the CIA’s golden girl? What the hell was going on?

“You must have pissed in somebody’s Froot Loops to get stuck with me.”

Sarah’s sour expression softened and she placed her hand atop Carina’s. “I requested you.” Carina was her friend. If she was going to be forced to work with some other member of the government alphabet soup for the foreseeable future, why not do so with a familiar face? Why not make the best of a crappy situation? When they told her that they were transferring her out of the CIA for what they were calling “re-certification,” she had requested the DEA. It would be perfect. If she couldn’t be partnered with Bryce, Carina was the next best thing.

Or so she had thought. She was not so sure now. Things had gone well for the first few hours. Until Carina had talked her into having a drink with her. One drink had turned into five. And five had somehow become ten. She could hold her alcohol better than most women—hell, she could drink Bryce under the table—but even she had trouble maintaining her wits after ten shots of Johnnie Walker Black. And, naturally, it had only gone downhill from there.

Carina beamed triumphantly like she had when she aced their class on Game Theory at the Point (the only class she’d scored higher marks in). Her hand flipped underneath Sarah’s splayed palm and entwined their fingers. “I knew you’d give in eventually. So my bed or yours?”

Sarah extracted her hand from Carina’s warm grip and sat up, wrapping her arms around her knees. Still, she had to laugh. “You’re ridiculous.”

“Made you laugh, didn’t I?”

The redhead always flirted with her, whether she needed comforting or not. It was just Carina’s nature. Sarah once watched Carina shamelessly flirt with an obviously gay fashion designer in Milan for thirty minutes because, as she had put it once Sarah had finally managed to pull her away, she wanted to see if she could change his mind. He had mouthed “Thank you” at Sarah as she’d dragged Carina back to work.

“So are we going to dispense with the foreplay and get down to it or do I need to continue getting you lubricated before you finally give me what I want?”

Sarah avoided locking eyes with her friend. “I said I don’t wanna talk—”

“Yeah, yeah, you don’t want to talk about it.” Carina sat up until she was more or less at eye-level with Sarah. Like everything else the redhead did, the movement was fluid, silky. And vaguely predatory, though Sarah wasn’t worried. “The problem is, I need to know if this is going to be an issue. This op could potentially make Pakistan look like a day at the spa—which you totally need, by the way, and when was the last time you got laid?”

Trying to follow Carina’s thought process while sober was next to impossible, and sobriety had vanished hours ago. Sarah latched onto the one thing she understood. “I can do the job, okay? God.”

“Can you?”

“I just said I could, didn’t I?” A mulish scowl overtook Sarah’s face.

“If you’re not sure, we could get Bryce here, give you a quick workover, screw you back into fighting shape. Hell. I could finally get that threesome I’ve been hinting at for _years_.”

“Shut the hell up about Bryce.”

It didn’t matter if she knew why Carina was pushing so hard—the job had to come first, after all—Sarah still hated it when people questioned her professionalism, especially in conjunction with her personal life. She was her own damn woman. Bryce Larkin didn’t dictate her thoughts, and actions, and the fact that he had his so-called panties in a bunch wouldn’t screw this up for her. She wouldn’t let her emotions affect the damned mission. She wasn’t some compromised, lovesick fool. And Bryce Larkin could shove it if he really thought otherwise.

In fact, screw Bryce Larkin. This was his fault, anyway.

It didn’t matter that she understood his position, and truthfully, she felt awful about it. Somewhere inside, in that locked part of her that being a field operative would never be able to touch, she knew that them being on the rocks was completely her fault. She’d handled it badly. She should have done more.

But damn it, they were _partners_. Didn’t that mean anything to the jerk? You didn’t give up on your damn partner just because of rocks in the freaking relationship. Partners were closer than friends, than family, than blood. It wasn’t something you could just give up on. When you entrusted your life into the hands of another, when you became so in-sync that you could communicate without speaking, the partnership became a part of you, and Sarah felt like she’d lost half a step.

There was nobody she trusted more than Bryce. Well, that wasn’t entirely true, a voice in her head pointed out, but she didn’t dwell on that because it was just absurd. She needed to figure out some way to fix things with Bryce. She couldn’t help how she felt, and she had tried, so many times, over the last five months to make those thoughts disappear, but no matter how many times she locked them away in the corners of her mind, they always came back. And that was worrying.

If she was obvious enough now that Bryce had picked up on things, what would she be like in another six months? A year?

There had to be something she could do, right? She knew Bryce had real, strong feelings for her. And that was a problem. But it wasn’t insurmountable, and she didn’t know why Bryce couldn’t see that. They could still work together. They could still kick ass and be the best team in the CIA. Certain things would have to change, that’s all. She had to have hope that Bryce would eventually realize that.

“Hmm,” Carina said, drawing Sarah’s attention back to her. She was eying Sarah very much like a cat studied a sumptuously fat mouse. “Touchy, touchy. Does this mean Bryce is on the open market?”

“Huh?”

“Is Bryce fair game?”

Oh, God, just what she didn’t need, Carina the Vixen making things more complicated than they were. “I don’t think that’s a good idea, so no.”

“Why not?” Carina pouted and gave her big doe eyes.

Sarah was not going to fall for it. “Because those kind of issues get in the way of the job.”

Carina scoffed and twirled some hair around a finger. “Oh fine. You twisted my arm. I’ll have sex with you. That way, when I sleep with Bryce there won’t be any problems. Everybody’s equal!”

It should have made Sarah laugh. After all, Carina was just an incorrigible flirt. Psychologists that weren’t “persuaded” by Carina to write otherwise would claim that the woman had a jaundiced view on sex and its utilization to assert dominance, as well as just a really fun pastime. She didn’t mean anything by her advances like these. Bryce’s refusal to work with Sarah anymore, his anger at her, however, was a bruise that just wouldn’t heal. Sarah squeezed her legs closer to her chest and propped her chin on her knee. “Just stop, okay? Bryce was—is my partner. Leave it alone. For me. Please.”

Carina fell silent. Sarah didn’t look at her. She’d ruined the night. It shouldn’t have been a big deal, Carina’s words. She didn’t mean them, except when she did. And Carina could just be so damn frustrating sometimes. The redhead insinuating herself into their private matter would only make things worse.

This was precisely why Carina could never, ever, not even under threat of bamboo shoots under the fingernails, find out about Chuck, Sarah thought. If Carina found out that Sarah sometimes thought about a guy she’d only met once, and not for very long, it would be like the chaotic side of Carina’s birthday and Christmas come early. Sure, there would be real concern, but Carina…just couldn’t help herself sometimes.

Stupid Chuck Bartowski.

She often wished she’d never met the man.

The way Chuck had effectively disarmed her emotions within forty-eight hours had been nothing but an aberration. After all, she’d been in control ever since, hadn’t she? The occasional lapses she’d had with Bryce had been little more than necessary tension relief…sex, and that was it. And that was the problem. To her, it was only sex. To Bryce, it was supposed to mean more, but she hadn’t had it in her to give him anything but the physical, not since he had tricked her out of Cabo.

Not when she spent so much time thinking about Chuck. It wasn’t fair to Bryce, it wasn’t fair to her, and it didn’t matter to Chuck. Chuck was in Siberia. Sarah was in Dubai.

The worst part was that it was all self-delusion. She knew that. She’d only spoken to Chuck once in the four months since he wished her _Merry Christmas_ , and after thirty seconds of conversation, probably less, she was back to square damn one with the feelings. Some aberration indeed.

And those thirty seconds screwed everything up. She was supposed to be a spy, but one look at her and Bryce had known. And that was when the trouble had started, damn it all.

And now here she was, stumbling toward drunk with an omnisexual redhead in their hotel suite in Dubai, dealing with the damned consequences. Or at least attempting to drown them.

Carina made a disgusted noise, drawing Sarah out of her musings. “Bored now. I’m going out to the hot tub,” she said. “You’re welcome to join me, but you have to leave the girly emotions inside. You’re a mess, Sarah Walker.”

“You’re not kidding,” Sarah said, meaning every word.

Carina softened just enough to let her see the human being beneath the diamond-hard DEA agent. “You should get some sleep.”

“I think I will.”

“Good. Because there’s always the hope that tomorrow you’ll stop resisting my advances, and if you do…you’ll want to be well-rested.” Carina’s smirk took on a feline smugness as she pushed herself to her feet and extended a hand to help Sarah up as well.

Sarah laughed and pushed the hand away before she climbed to her feet on her own volition. “You wish,” she said.

“Hell yeah I do.” One final grin and Carina headed toward the balcony of their suite, which housed the Jacuzzi, shedding her dress on the way.

Sarah didn’t bother to wait around and see if it was the red lingerie or the black today. She stumbled a little as she headed toward her room in the suite. It was useless to lock the door—even drunk, Carina could pick a lock faster than anybody in any of the agencies, and she would have no compulsions about climbing into bed with Sarah simply to mess with the blonde’s head—but it was habit. She stripped out of her own dress, let it fall to the floor, and climbed into bed, collapsing face-first into the mattress. She groped blindly for her sleep-mask with her hand.

Tomorrow’s another day, she thought, fitting the mask over her eyes. I’ll get over Bryce’s pissy feelings then.

Chuck Bartowski, not so much. But then, she’d been doomed from the start there.


	2. Surf and Turf

**14 APRIL 2006  
THE DESERT JEWEL, SUITE 1802  
10:13 AST**

“This’ll just be like _The Italian Job_ ,” Carina said with a grin, “only you are so much hotter than Michael Caine.”

Sarah merely looked up from the blueprints with a blank expression.

“Oh for the love of—doesn’t Bryce teach you anything?”

“I’m sorry, Bryce and I do this thing where we actually work for a living. Doesn’t leave a lot of time for movies.”

Carina rolled her eyes and shifted her focus back to the table. “You know, there are these remarkable inventions called portable DVD players. You can take them anywhere. Even planes!”

Carina paused, interest already changing, and then tapped the edge of the table. “Damn, this is going to be a bitch.”

Sarah shrugged. She had a killer hangover and talking wasn’t something that interested her all that much at the moment.

Besides, Carina had always been more than willing to do enough talking for the both of them. “It’d help if we had a third set of hands.” She leaned forward and peered closer at the bank’s vault. “Are you sure Bryce can’t join us?”

“Yes.”

Carina sighed. “When this is over, remind me to teach you how to keep a man happy and properly compliant.”

“I’m sorry, when did this become the Fifties again? The mission, Carina.”

“Touchy, touchy.”

No, just hungover and still battling nausea. Why had she thought single-handedly killing a bottle of scotch between them was ever a good idea? Carina was one of those inhuman people that never suffered from hangovers, which was probably why she had gone to work for the DEA. Maybe it was time to return the favor. Feeling deliciously evil, Sarah eyed her friend sideways. “It’s just you and me. Don’t tell me you think you’re not up to it?”

Carina’s head whipped up, her stormy gray eyes filled with anger. Sarah would have smirked at the reaction if she weren’t fighting pounding pain in her skull and nausea in her stomach; she might have felt pleased. Carina wasn’t the only one who could play the game, and her friend had always been easy to rile up.

“I never said that!”

“Are you sure? Because from what I’m hearing, it sounds like you’d rather not do the mission at all.”  
Carina scowled and then said, “I know what you’re doing.”

“And?”

“You’re just lucky I have no self-control.”

“Finally caught on, huh?”

Carina mockingly mouthed her words back at her before turning back to the table. “Oh, go take a Tylenol.”

She’d downed half the bottle. “You take a Tylenol,” she said, somewhat childishly.

Carina smirked. “You do have a plan, right?”

“Do _I_ have a plan? It’s your op!”

“Sarah dear, do I strike you as the kind of woman who plans things?”

Sarah sighed and should have known it would come to this. “I have some ideas.”

Sarah had to hand it to her friend. People could say what they liked about Carina Miller’s tactics, her unpredictability, her unorthodox methods, her views on life, the universe, everything, but Carina excelled at one thing: she could find a flaw in any plan with her eyes closed. Sarah figured it had everything to do with the fact that Carina usually delighted in exploiting said flaws, which meant that she was like a bloodhound in discovering them. And it also meant that Sarah, while Carina dismissed almost every one of her plans, had to be on top of her game as well, to make sure Carina wasn’t simply spotting flaws and forgetting to mention them so that she could cause chaos later. Being around Carina for any extended period of time was exhausting for that reason alone.

Oh, and the constantly turning down propositions, but that went without saying when it was Carina Miller.

“Okay,” Carina said two hours later, while Sarah nursed a Diet Coke and a migraine. “I think we’ve got it.” She pursed her lips again and whistled. “Going to need some serious tech on this one.”

“Yeah, I noticed.”

“Freelance?”

“Can we afford it? Your agency’s the one footing the bill.”

Carina’s wince was almost hidden.

“Guess not,” Sarah said, and put the cold Diet Coke glass against her forehead. “Any of the geeks in your department up for this sort of thing?”

“You’re kidding me, right? I had to show one of them how to turn on his cell phone last week.”

Sarah lowered the glass and stared at Carina. “What were _you_ even doing talking to a geek?”

Carina shrugged. “They’re fun when they blush? How about you? Any whiz kids in the C-I-Ass?”

“As opposed to the D-E-Ass?” Sarah shook her head. “Digital Dave’s too busy to tackle even the prep work for a project like this. And he’s got too many teams as it is.” A name whispered at the back of her mind and she set the glass down before she dropped it. “But I may know somebody.”

“Well, that’s certainly cryptic,” Carina said.

“Shut up. I’ll have to clear it through channels first, though.” Sarah rolled her eyes inwardly, remembering the heat that she and Bryce had faced for even daring to drop in on Chuck for forty-eight hours. There was no way she was going up against whatever fiery line they’d drawn around Chuck Bartowski without proper authority again. She didn’t think her career could handle it, not with things already in the toilet over this Bryce-Pissiness-Fiasco.

“Well, youngster, time’s a’ wastin’,” Carina drawled in a poor imitation of a southern accent.

Sarah wrinkled her nose at her friend. “I think I’ll make the calls from the bedroom. And no, I don’t want company.”

She picked up her glass, the lifesaving bottle of pain medication, and strolled out, adding an extra sway to her hips just to make Carina laugh.

 **14 APRIL 2006  
THE DESERT JEWEL, SUITE 1802, ROOM B  
17:26 AST**

She could not believe that she was going to do this. It was stupid. Scratch that. Stupid didn’t really do what she was about to do justice. Insane was probably a more apt description. It was also terrifying.

She stared at the black matte satellite phone for a good ten minutes before she could even pick it up. She started to run through scenarios in her head, most of them concerning what she was going to say. She analyzed and then evaluated them as quickly as they formed. Every single one was dismissed as not being good enough. She wasn’t surprised; she had learned early on that Chuck could often make her feel more like a nervous school girl than a professional agent. It was damn annoying.

Should she be serious and aloof? She might need the distance that would provide. She thought back to how Chuck had acted the last time they spoke. He had been worried, anxious, but still entirely professional, giving her what she needed even before she realized she needed it. He had remarkable tactical sense for somebody who had never actually been in the field; an ability to analyze a situation instantly, sometimes even when given scant information, and act on his own initiative. He could disable cameras and alarms, hack databases and security systems, upload viruses, download data, things she never even thought of or could ever hope to do on her own. Not once, since she and Bryce had started using him for technical support, had he ever steered them wrong. She had been amazed more than once and she was damn curious as to how he did it.

She was at a loss as to why Bryce had waited as long as he did before introducing them. Chuck had saved their asses more than once since he became their on-call tech support. He could have made the first year of their partnership so much easier.

She was getting distracted. She needed to focus. She had to play this right. Chuck would probably already be on guard that it wasn’t Bryce calling. She’d never actually approached Chuck before, it was always Bryce who set things up for their missions and it was always Bryce who did the talking. Would Chuck even remember her?

She was being ridiculous. Of course Chuck would remember her. He had remembered her at Christmas and he had remembered her in February. There was no reason for her to even think that he might have forgotten her. So why did the idea that he had fill her full of dread?

Focus, Walker. Think! Get in and get out. Stick to the plan. Don’t let him get to you. That was the problem. Trying to plan for a conversation with Chuck was next to impossible. Mainly because, when she talked to him, she tended to lose her focus. He was dangerous like that.

It was now or never. She dialed the number.

He picked up after the third ring. “Jackson Georges here,” he said, voice slightly tinny and distant.

“Uh, hi, Chuck.” She wanted to smack herself. Wow, what a brilliant opening.

The pause seemed to last forever. “Sarah?”

“Guilty as charged.”

“This is a surprise. Is everything okay?”

She swallowed slightly. Everything was _not_ fine, she didn’t know what was happening between her and Bryce, she really needed somebody to talk to. Of course, all she said was, “Everything’s fine.” Her voice never wavered.

“Okay.” She thought she detected a hint of doubt in his response but quickly pushed that thought away. “I assume that time is critical? Just let me get to my desk and I’ll do what I can.”

She could hear rustling and Chuck’s breathing and then the sound of somebody sitting in a chair. “Where’s Bryce? Is he okay?”

“Bryce is fine, Chuck. He’s doing reconnaissance right now and wanted me to handle the mission prep.” She didn’t really like lying to Chuck, but she didn’t want him to know about her and Bryce either. She couldn’t stop the feeling that Chuck wouldn’t help her if Bryce wasn’t there.

“Oh. So this isn’t like last time?” He sounded like he had relaxed now that he knew it wasn’t an emergency. “Cool.”

“Is that a problem?” She didn’t realize she was holding her breath until he replied.

“Of course not. Why would it be?” She heard tapping on a keyboard. “So what can I do for you today? Need me to Cylon some mainframe? Goldblum a security system? Provide plucky comic relief?”

“I…don’t know what any of that means.” She assumed it was yet another string of pop culture references. “But I’ve got a job for you. Think you’re up for it?”

Chuck laughed and the sound thrilled her, which only made her annoyed at herself. “Please,” he said with a cocky drawl that inspired warmth to suffuse her, “it’s me.”

And that, Sarah thought, was half the problem.

 **14 APRIL 2006  
THE DESERT JEWEL, SUITE 1802, ROOM B  
19:01 AST**

“Dinner time!” Carina sang through Sarah’s door.

The blonde didn’t lift her head up from her arms. She hadn’t been crying, which it might have seemed like to an outsider looking in. She was simply exhausted, and had rested her forehead on her arms on her desk instead of crawling all four feet to the bed behind her. “Wonderful,” she said, positive that Carina could hear her. The agent had perfect hearing. “I’ll be out in a few minutes.”

There was a pause, and Sarah closed her eyes and muttered under her breath. “Don’t come in here, don’t come in here, don’t—”

Carina pushed the door open as smoothly as if it had never been locked in the first place and plopped onto the bed. “What’s up with you?” she asked.

“Nothing.” Sarah forced herself to sit up and smile. “What’s for dinner?”

“What else? Surf and turf. Steak diane, lobster, that mozzarella salad you love so much.” Carina shrugged.

“I love that you’re so frugal with taxpayers’ dollars, Carina.”

Carina’s shrug said it all: I don’t give a damn.

“Okay, then,” Sarah said, pushing herself away from the desk and the satellite phone still in the corner. “Surf and turf it is.” She gestured that Carina should precede her from the room, as she knew the redhead might make a leap for the satellite phone if left alone. Not that Sarah blamed her. She would have done exactly the same in any similar situation.

Indeed, Carina pouted a little, but tilted her head in acknowledgment of a game well played before she swept from the room. The room service waiter had set up their dinner in the room’s sizeable dining area, two domed platters of silver that made Sarah think of the movies. She would have preferred to just grab a bite of whatever was handy—hamburger, pizza, something that would undoubtedly add an extra mile to her run in the hotel’s sizeable gym just like tonight’s dinner—over the plans for the bank, but this was Carina’s op, which meant they had to cater to her sense of theatricality. She took her seat opposite Carina and pulled the dome away.

“Where did you disappear to this afternoon?” she asked as she spread her napkin in her lap. “I heard you leave.”

“Surveillance.” Carina cut into her steak and gave Sarah a slightly feral grin. “And the concierge was making bedroom eyes at me. I had to see if his bedroom matched his eyes.”

Sarah grinned and sipped her wine. “And did it?”

“A lady never kisses and tells.” Carina’s pause was just long enough. “Good thing there are none of those present. It, sadly, did not, but his brother looked quite promising. Maybe for tomorrow?”  
Sarah had to laugh.

“Loaded up the photos I took of the bank—I used my spy skills, don’t give me that look, nobody caught me—onto the laptop, so you can look them over tonight after you tell me who the guy is.”

Sarah’s hand, in the process of setting the wine back on the table cloth, faltered. It was a split-second movement, but it was an eternity too long for subtlety. Still, Sarah sent a bored look Carina’s way. “What guy?”

Carina hooted with laughter. “I knew it! I knew that was why you were being cryptic.”

“Because I don’t want to reveal my tech source?” Sarah asked.

“Because you want to bone your tech source! Who is he? Seriously, this is great.” Carina grinned again when Sarah’s mouth dropped open. “I knew there was more to this Bryce thing.”

“Excuse me,” Sarah said after she had levered her jaw shut, “my life does not revolve around my sex life!”

“Pity, that,” Carina remarked, cutting another bite of steak. She took her time chewing. “Steak’s getting cold.”

Sarah set her knife and fork down.

“I don’t want to ‘bone’ my tech source, as you so nicely put it. God, do you have to be so crude all the time?”

“And now you’re getting pissy,” Carina observed. “Sounds like it might be more than a case of needing to get between the sheets and relieve some tension, Sarah.” She paused to consider what she had said, then brightened. “I can help with that last part!”

Sarah glared at her. “I’m going to finish this in my room.”

“Your loss.” Carina shrugged and forked up a bite of lobster, dipping it in the reduced butter sauce with the ease of long practice, while Sarah packed up her dinnerware. “You must really like this guy.”

“I’m not talking about this with you,” Sarah said pointedly.

“Getting defensive, making the huffy face, yup. You’ve got it bad.”

Sarah shot her the finger as she left, but Carina’s raucous laugh that followed her made her at least smile to herself.


	3. Break and Enter

**24 APRIL 2006**  
 **THE DESERT JEWEL**  
 **19:37 AST**

A dust storm had erupted just after lunch, ensuring that Sarah felt a film of dirt and grit caked over her skin as she made her way back to the Desert Jewel. It had the benefit of darkening the slim strip of skin visible under the niqab she’d taken up as a disguise, at least, but it was an annoyance. She alternated between tourist and local, and the latter meant a judicious layer of makeup on her hands, reapplied regularly because she always managed to sweat through it, and brown contact lenses. She’d used a rinse and an eyebrow pencil to darken her brows, which helped, and she spoke the language like a local, but all of her knowledge couldn’t keep her from feeling vaguely racist whenever she adopted this garb.

Today, though, today it had been worth it.

In the elevator, she shouldered the worn rucksack she had carried in by hand back to the hotel. She probably should have switched back to tourist Sarah, as she looked too rundown to be any of the hotel’s high-class clientele, but she was impatient to get back to the room. After two weeks in Dubai, she wanted to get this over with. And thanks to her efforts that day, it might be over sooner than she thought.

The minute she made it inside, she peeled off the niqab. “Hello?” she called.

No answer. Carina must be doing recon, Sarah figured. She’d likely expected Sarah to take longer than she had. Others complained about Carina, but Sarah knew better. The redhead worked just as hard as the rest of them; she just preferred not to let others know about it.

The thought made Sarah grin. She’d hit pay dirt _and_ had gotten the drop on Carina? It totally made the grit and grime worth it. She left the rucksack on the table, the main pouch wide open so that Carina would spot the camera nestled inside. With that done, she went to grab a shower.

Carina hadn’t come back by the time she emerged, freshly scrubbed, so she sat down at her laptop to upload the pictures. There were a few new emails: one checking in from Agent Pennyweather, a couple of spam messages her filter had ignored, and finally, one from Chuck. She saved this for last and tried not to equate it in her mind to savoring the final piece of chocolate in the box.

It was only a note to let her know that the package was ready for a name, followed by a line that Sarah had to Google. She had a feeling that even if she _were_ into pop culture, she probably wouldn’t have heard of the movie _Quick Change_ , so it worked out for the best. She sent a name, a picture, and a smiley face back in reply since she wasn’t the clever or witty type, and asked how he was doing.

 _Cold_ was the reply. _But good_.

 _Wish I could be cold for once_ , Sarah replied, as the heat had been miserable that day.

This time, the smiley face came from Chuck.

Carina came bouncing through the door. “My contact emailed,” Sarah said without looking up from the laptop screen. “Package is ready.”

“And hello to you, too,” Carina said. Her white dress was tinged with the red sand of the region, and she had a parasol dangling from her wrist like some kind of high class snob from the early 1900s. The smirk, however, was purely twenty-first century as she dropped her overlarge sunglasses on the table next to Sarah’s elbow. “When did greetings go out of style?”

“I don’t know. You should Google it.”

“Mm, too much work.” Carina stripped off a pair of lace gloves. “How comes you always email Bunker Boy? His honey tones just not warming up your ear canal, Walker?”

Sarah squinted at her partner. “Are you drunk?”

“Okay, that one you can have. It was a lame joke.” Carina continued shedding layers—the ridiculous hat with the expansive brim, the jewelry that Sarah hoped was paste, her strappy sandals—until she wore nothing but her dress. “Question still stands.”

“Pass. I got you a present.”

Carina’s eyes lit up with fake amusement. “Is it a puppy?”

“Better.”

“You lie. Nothing’s better than a puppy.”

Like either of them would know the first thing about keeping a puppy alive for more than a day, Sarah thought, but she just smiled and shook her head.

“Okay,” Carina said, taking the camera from her, “maybe sex is better than a puppy, but you didn’t get me sex, Walker. I know you too well. I’ve almost come to terms with the fact that I take second place in your heart to the oh-so-mysterious Bunker Boy.”

“Just look at the pictures.”

“Fine.” The sigh that Carina heaved would have made Oscar winners jealous. She settled in, propping her feet up on the edge of Sarah’s chair, to flick through the pictures on the camera’s memory card. Sarah knew the minute her friend had arrived at the photo in question, for Carina’s eyebrows shot up into her hairline. “Ooh-la-la, Walker. What was a girl like you doing in a place like this?”

“Embroidery,” Sarah said, her tone dryer than the Arabian desert all around them.

“I hope I at least get a scarf out of it.” Carina continued to page through the pictures, going quiet in that way that suggested her brain was scheming or something vaguely nefarious, which seemed to describe Carina’s entire existence, in Sarah’s opinion. Finally, the redhead set the camera down on the table, popped her neck, and rose to her feet.

“What are you doing?” Sarah asked as Carina moved toward her bedroom.

“It’s a good start,” Carina said, “but we’re going to need to a little more than that. Time to take matters into our own hands.”

“It worries me when you say things like that.”

**25 APRIL 2006**  
 **THE DESERT JEWEL, SUITE 1802**  
 **23:54 AST**

Sarah bent over her friend’s bicep, leaning in close to make sure that the stitches were small enough not to leave a permanent scar. She would have called it an act of good friendship, though with the way Carina was going on, she was starting to reconsider.

“All right, all right,” Carina said. “Sweet hell, woman. I solemnly swear that the next time we have a mission where one of us has to play the honey-pot stripper, you can do it. If you’d wanted it so badly, all you had to do was ask.”

Sarah rolled her eyes. “Okay, for one—I wasn’t commenting on your ability to strip, Carina. God.”

“Well, you’re serving up quite the side of judgey-judgey with your medical aid over here.”

“All I said was that maybe, next time you’re playing a stripper, you might not want to knee the high-roller with five bodyguards in the face. That’s all.” Sarah closed up the final stitch with a competence that spoke of many times working with Carina and sat back to admire her handiwork with a sigh. “You’re lucky the mark had already left so your cover wasn’t blown.”

“We got what we needed _and_ we got to kick ass. What are you complaining about?”

Sarah debated arguing exactly why it was a bad idea to start a bar fight in a foreign country when they only had a forty-eight hour window to pull off a job—Pennyweather had emailed her to tell her that her time with Chuck was almost up—but decided it wasn’t worth it. “Never mind. Forget it. We need to be focusing on the mission anyway. I’m going to go get some sleep.”

“Oh, c’mon, Walker, it’s our last night in Dubai. We should live it up.”

“We should sleep is what we should do.”

“Does Bunker Boy know how not-fun you get? Or are you waiting to surprise him on the honeymoon?”

“You’re awfully fixated on Bunker—on my contact,” Sarah said, narrowing her eyes at her friend. “Somebody who didn’t know better would say you’re jealous.”

“Maybe I have reason to be. After all, this mysterious guy is going to help us rob a bank in Dubai and I don’t even know his name.”

“I’m vouching for him, and my neck’s on the line just like yours.”

“Maybe I don’t trust you.”

“That’s rich. I’m the one who should be doubting you. After all, Pakistan was whose fault, again?”

“On a dare from you,” Carina said, picking up her tumbler and tossing the contents back with barely a grimace.

“At no point did I say, ‘I dare you, Carina, to test the security cameras by doing the Macarena.’”

“My memory says otherwise.”

“What about Tajikistan?”

“Fluke.”

“Uruguay?”

“Curiosity.”

Sarah rolled her eyes. “Uh-huh, right. Look, my source is good and he’s trustworthy.”

“You’re just saying that because you want to get into his pants.”

She was not, and Carina knew it, but Sarah glared at the whiskey bottle, picked it up, and poured herself a shot. She told herself it wasn’t nerves over the fact that they were going to rob a bank—in freaking _Dubai_ —the next day, but lying to herself had never been easy. “‘Atta girl, Walker,” Carina said. “Saves me from drinking alone.”

“I’m doing this because you’ll just go out and start another bar fight if I don’t drink with you,” Sarah said, pointing at her friend. “It’s self-preservation, nothing more.”

Carina snorted. “Just keep telling yourself that, blondie.”

**26 APRIL 2006**  
 **THE DESERT JEWEL, SUITE 1802**  
 **11:48 AST**

Whoever had written that rule about only being young once and making the most of it had never fully understood the true consequences of whiskey, Sarah was convinced. Though the painkillers she’d downed with breakfast had dulled the edge of her headache to an almost-tolerable pounding, she still felt a vicious spurt of temper flare up as Carina decided between the red hat and the black.

The redhead didn’t miss the micro-expression; instead, she smiled, one half of her thin lips canting up in that feral sort of amusement that Sarah had always hated. That same look had preceded the stitches above her eyebrow in Barcelona, and at least three demerits added to their records at the Point, if not more. “Gotta say,” Carina said, adjusting the loose overcoat she wore over her sundress, “that hangover-temper thing you’ve got going on is really helping you get into the bodyguard character, Walker.”

Sarah figured she’d only prove Carina’s point by telling her to shut up. “Are you ready?” she asked instead of replying to Carina’s childish taunts.

“What do you think—the red hat or the black?” Carina tried on the two hats in succession, tilting her head and pouting in turns. They’d decided that she would play an heiress. It would be up to Sarah to stand behind her and look stoic (Carina’s argument for it had been that Sarah had perpetually been in a bad mood over the whole Bryce fiasco anyway, so why not just call herself Method?). Sarah wore dark, nondescript clothing, aviators, and an annoyed look, while Carina had decked herself out in Chanel and other name brands that Sarah’s discerning eye catalogued with some envy.

“Why do you need a hat, again?”

“Bunker Boy’s going to have access to the overhead cameras and I don’t want him seeing my face,” Carina said. Sarah gaped at her friend; Carina had once stormed a compound wearing nothing but a bikini in full view of local news cameras. Anonymity had never been a _thing_ with her, so why did it matter now?

The satellite phone clipped to her belt vibrated. “Speaking of Bunker Boy,” Carina said.

“I’ll take this outside,” Sarah said, heading for the balcony. She closed the sliding glass door behind her—like that would stop Carina—before she dropped into the patio chair and answered the phone. “Walker.”

“Hey, Sarah.” Chuck’s voice sounded rusty, like he hadn’t used it in a while. There was, as always, a warmth to his tone that Sarah liked. “Sorry. Uh, Agent Walker. Hi, Agent Walker.”

“You can call me Sarah,” Sarah said.

“Oh, good. I’m, um, glad, Agent—Sarah. Oh! This is Chuck—Chuck Bartowski, by the way, if your sat-phone doesn’t have ID or anything—”

Sarah couldn’t stop the smile, so she deliberately kept her back to Carina, still inside the suite. They’d packed up all of their belongings and had stowed them at drop locations, so it was just the redhead left inside with the gear for the mission. “I know it’s you, Chuck.”

“Oh, okay,” Chuck said, sounding relieved. “I’m just calling to see if the mission’s still on.”

“Why? You haven’t got cold feet, have you?”

“Uh, kind of stuck in Siberia.”

“Oh. Right. Yeah, I can see—”

“But I am so ready to help you rob a bank, Sarah Walker,” Chuck said in another lightning flash mood swing. “I’ve got the package all cued up to deliver and everything. It’s a beauty. Their techs are going to be writing academic papers on it for months. And you know, I’m doing the banking industry a favor by exposing a weakness, too.”

“You’re a regular hero,” Sarah said, smiling a little.

“Nah, just tech support.” Chuck’s voice was dismissive. She wondered if that was normal, but there wasn’t much time to contemplate it because he went on, “Got a timeframe for when you’d like the package delivered?”

“Well, my partner is having a hard time picking a hat, so it may be awhile.”

“Bryce is wearing a hat? Tell me it’s a fedora. I’ve always wanted to see somebody rob a bank in a fedora.”

“Different partner,” Sarah said, shaking her head. She’d emailed Chuck quite a bit since coming to Dubai—short, impersonal notes to let each other know of the other’s progress—but she had to wonder at some of Chuck’s non sequituers. “Bryce is on the outside for this one.”

“Oh, okay.”

“How long does the package last?”

“Twenty-three minutes, give or take. Forty-seven if you don’t want the spinning rims.”

“And how long does it take to deploy?”

“Two minutes, twelve seconds. I really am that good.”

“Okay, tell you what, I’ll call you just as we’re about to go in, you can deploy the package, and we’ll be all set.”

“Perfect. I await your call, Agent Wal—Sarah.”

Sarah bade him good-bye with another promise to call and headed back inside. “For God’s sake, Carina, go with the black. Can we _go_ now?”

“Patience is a virtue, Walker,” Carina said emerging from her suite with the red hat on. Sarah rolled her eyes. “And how is your lover?”

“My _contact_ is ready to go and anxious. We clear here? Everything wiped?”

Carina held up a gloved hand. “Like I don’t know how to clean up a scene. What do you think I am, a rookie?”

“Not even going to dignify that with a response.” Sarah picked up her go-bag, the only thing left in the suite apart from her and Carina, and headed for the door. She cast a glance about as she did so. For all of her sarcastic commentary to Carina over the past couple of weeks about wasting tax payers’ dollars, the hotel suite had been a _nice_ place to stay. A girl could get used to such a life of luxury. It certainly beat some of the crappy safe houses the CIA had forced her to hole up in during missions. Maybe her transfer to the DEA wouldn’t be so bad after all.

“Farewell, home sweet home,” Carina said, clapping Sarah on the shoulder as they left the suite. “Let’s go rob a bank.”

**26 APRIL 2006**  
 **FIRST PERSIAN GULF BANK**  
 **13:12 AST**

Carina Miller, Sarah had learned, could become anybody under the sun. That wasn’t terribly significant in their line of work—Sarah could do exactly the same thing, and had many times—but where it differed was that every reiteration of Carina came with one thing in common: a penchant for chaos. It was as much a part of her as the blood and DNA that would make up anybody else. Because of that, when Carina sashayed her way into the bank on her Manolo Blahniks, Sarah felt more tension than usual running up her spinal cord. Every flirtatious, sugar-laden smile Carina gave the clerks made Sarah tense up just a little bit more. It helped sell her cover as a bodyguard, she supposed.

“Oh, her?” Carina asked the teller before she glanced over her shoulder at Sarah, eyes full of fun. “I’m afraid she has to stay with me. Carol’s been my bodyguard for two years now—my husband insisted. He worries about me, you know.”

The lobby of First Persian Gulf Bank was grand, opulent and luxurious in a way that veered dangerously close to tacky. Sarah had been in there multiple times during recon, usually wearing wigs or hijabs to partially obscure her face. In addition, she’d studied the blueprints extensively, so she knew where every exit was, where the silent alarms lay, and even how many security guards would be making their way through the lobby on their rounds. It didn’t stop her from feeling like a wire pulled taut, ready to snap or snap back, especially since Carina’s eyes had taken on that extra sheen of fun right before they’d headed inside the bank. She got off on this kind of mission, Sarah knew, while Sarah needed the promise of a good fight to get that adrenaline kick.

“I’ll need to see some identification from your bodyguard, Mrs. Bishop,” the teller told Carina.

Sarah did her best not to look happy about it as she handed over her passport, which had her listed as Carol Alianovna, a Russian national. The teller input a few numbers into the system—which made Sarah nervous, but Chuck’s virus should be working by this point—and handed the passport back with a brief, courteous nod.

“Very well, your information checks out,” the teller told Carina.

Carina’s smile ratcheted up a notch. “That’s wonderful news, darling.”

“If you will wait here, somebody will be here to escort you back to your safety deposit box immediately.” The teller managed one smooth smile, though Sarah could tell Carina’s incessant flirting had rattled him, and vanished rather quickly.

“Hold this for me, would you, darling?” Carina asked, handing Sarah her clutch before she bent to fix the hem of her skirt. When she straightened, she asked, out of the side of her mouth, “Third guard, twelve o’clock. That new?”

“I saw him,” Sarah said.

“Problem?”

“Shouldn’t be.” Sarah handed the clutch back with a smile and a polite, “Mrs. Bishop, ma’am,” in a Russian accent. She then shifted her stance back to parade rest—let them think she was ex-military, it fit the profile—and waited with a stony expression on her face for the teller to return, ever wary that somebody might discover the virus that Chuck had used to infect the bank’s computer systems at any moment. Everything looked normal, which, like Carina’s calamity-causing nature, put her back up. Part of her recognized that after the last few disastrous missions with Bryce, she just expected the worst to happen. The fact that it hadn’t yet just made it worse.

The teller returned with a tall man in a well-tailored suit. Neither Carina nor Sarah gave any sign that they recognized him. “Mrs. Bishop,” the teller said, “this is Mr. Faisal. He’ll be escorting you and Miss Alianovna back into the private viewing room.”

Carina’s mouth made an O of surprise. “We won’t actually get to see the deposit boxes ourselves?”

“I’m afraid it’s against our policy, ma’am.”

“Aw, shucks. I was so looking forward to seeing all of those shiny deposit boxes together. Very well. Mr. Fazzal, was it?”

“Faisal, ma’am,” Mr. Faisal corrected without a single outward sign of contempt for the “Ugly American” stereotype standing in front of him.

“Mr. Faisal, then,” Carina said, correcting herself with a girlish giggle. “Lead on. Oh, this is exciting, isn’t it, Caro?”

“Yes, ma’am,” Sarah said, and followed Carina and the bank employee out of the lobby. They had to go through the metal detector, which made Sarah edgy. Coming in to a bank robbery like this with no gun almost made her feel naked, but she gave no sign of it as she set her cell phone and other possessions in the small dish, and walked through the sensor.

She also gave no sign that any of this felt familiar as they left the metal detector behind and headed into the middle of the bank, though she’d studied the blueprints of the bank every night, and knew the location of everything, down to the final potted fern. The bank’s floors were marble, veined with pink and edged with gold. There was no sense of urgency about them as they followed Mr. Faisal, though Sarah knew this to be one of the busiest banks in Dubai. Everything seemed calm, smooth, and quietly efficient. They walked down a hallway lined with monitors, most of which showed the news from several different countries around the world. Sarah made sure to let her eyes focus on the monitor showing the Channel One news report from Moscow, as that would have drawn Miss Alianovna’s eye. She was about to look away, ready to focus on the mission once more, when the monitor cut abruptly to black.

No, not entirely black, she saw. In the middle of the monitor was a colon and a close-parenthesis symbol. A smiley face. She blinked, and it disappeared, so quickly that she was almost convinced she was seeing things. But when it happened again two monitors down, she understood it: Chuck.

She felt a little of the tension ease. Chuck had found a way to let her know that the virus had taken hold, and even better, that he was watching over them. Mr. Faisal hadn’t spotted the fluctuating news monitors, and Sarah wasn’t sure if Carina had, but that made Sarah feel a lot better as she followed her partner and the unfortunate employee that had been chosen—Chuck’s work, again, as part of the virus he’d delivered had brought Mr. Faisal’s name up on the rotation to escort Sarah and Carina back to the private viewing room, which was a nice area surrounded by a curtain.

The minute Mr. Faisal left them alone, with the promise to fetch Carina’s box for her, Sarah began checking for cameras in the curtained area. “Clear,” she said.

“Oh, thank God.” Carina immediately dropped the honeypot act. “Best part was he didn’t even recognize me.”

“Well, he wasn’t exactly focused on your face last night.” Sarah crouched down and removed the plastic dummy gun from her ankle holster. It felt downright silly, but it _looked_ real. She tossed a second gun to Carina, who fielded it one-handed, and gave her friend a nod. “Ready?”

“Oh yeah.” Carina’s grin came on slowly. “Since you won’t put out, I have been _dying_ for some action.”

Sarah really hoped that wish literally wouldn’t come true. “Nympho.”

“Prude.”

“God, I love working with you. Okay, here he comes.”

Mr. Faisal, carrying the shoe-box sized metal box, stepped in through the curtain with a polite smile on his face. “Here you are, Mrs.—” was as far as he got before Sarah stepped up behind him from where she’d been waiting beside the opening, and pressed the gun to the underside of his jaw. He froze; Sarah clapped a hand over his mouth before he could shout.

Carina held out the rather risqué (and perfectly in focus, Sarah was proud to say) photograph of him in the embrace of a stripper. “Hiya,” she said. “Ready to become an accessory in the greatest bank heist of your life?”

Mr. Faisal, son-in-law to the owner of the bank and definitely not a man who should be cavorting with strippers, took one look at the photograph, the redhead, and then the blonde, and did the smart thing: he put his hands over his head and nodded.


	4. Assault and Battery

**26 APRIL 2006**  
 **FIRST PERSIAN GULF BANK**  
  **13:18 AST**

Sarah pushed the unfortunate Mr. Faisal forward, grateful they’d picked a time when most of the bank’s employees were at lunch. A thousand thoughts whirled through her mind. Was Chuck’s encryption package, the one that piggy-backed off of a transfer and overwrote them out of the surveillance tapes, working? Had the bank discovered it yet? How close were they to getting caught? And, most importantly of all, why the hell was Carina  _behaving_?

She knew her friend. By now, Carina should have tried to jeopardize the mission three times. But the redhead moved behind her, looking every bit a wealthy heiress as Sarah propelled the bank employee forward. She had a gloved hand clutching the brim of her hat, the better to hide from the security cameras with. Carina believed in  _You show me yours, I’ll show you mine_ , which meant that until Sarah revealed Chuck’s identity—something that was never gonna happen, if Sarah had anything to say about it—Carina was keeping a firm lid on her own identity. It didn’t bother Sarah in the slightest.

“The—the security deposit boxes are this way,” Mr. Faisal said, a stammer in his voice, pointing when they reached an intersection in the hallway. “If you will follow me—”

“Nice try, _Solnyshko_ ,” Sarah said, adjusting her grip on his shoulder as Carina snickered at the nickname. “Safety deposit boxes are the other way. March.”

Mr. Faisal sighed. Sarah didn’t blame him, given that the photo they’d shown him was rather explicit. The owner of the bank, also his father-in-law, was rumored to be something of a tyrant, to say nothing of Faisal’s wife. Sarah didn’t envy him the dressing-downs he’d be facing after this whole incident.

They made it to the safety deposit box vault without incident. Every echo made her want to cringe, but they passed nobody and soon, Mr. Faisal was fumbling for the keypad, cursing in Arabic under his breath as Carina and Sarah watched.

 The light above the panel flashed green. Sarah didn’t relax.

“After you,” Carina said, smirking at Sarah.

Sarah knew that smirk too well to fall for it. “Why don’t we go in together?” she asked in Russian. Mr. Faisal looked from one to the other, sweat dripping, and Carina laughed, tossing her head back just slightly (but not enough so that her face was visible to the cameras).

As she stepped through the door alongside Carina, pushing Mr. Faisal, Sarah caught a glimpse of a monitor down the hallway. There was a smiley face emoticon on it. Chuck was still watching over them.

She felt some of the tension ease from her spine. Carina must have noticed, for she gave Sarah a narrow-eyed look.

The safety deposit box room was remarkably unimpressive. While the areas of the bank where the customers were allowed were fancy and tastefully done, the interior of the safety deposit box vault was almost shabby. Cubby-holes, each with a thumbprint scanner, filled three of the walls from floor to ceiling. In the center of the room, there were tables, presumably for unloading some of the boxes, and Sarah didn’t need to look up and see the four different cameras angled at this area alone to know that they took their security seriously. They really were doing the bank owners a favor, she determined, as Chuck’s virus would also force them to update their digital security as well. Score one for the benevolence of the DEA.

Once the door shut, Carina moved to the table and began removing the contents of her purse: a small thumb drive, an envelope, and four small, plastic sheaths. Sarah shoved Mr. Faisal into the room’s only chair and stood guard, her gun pointed at him. His eyes widened as Carina pulled one of the sheaths onto her thumb and headed for one of the deposit boxes.

The thumbprint scanner light went from red to green. Carina pulled open the little cubby door and let out a low whistle. “Ooh-la-la,” she said.

“What?” Sarah asked.

Carina turned, holding up a pair of diamond earrings that cost more than Sarah would make in her lifetime. “What do you think? Do they bring out my eyes?”

“They’re not blood-red or demonic, so no.”

“Oh, don’t be a bitch, Caro,” Carina said, using her cover name. With a long-suffering sigh (Sarah rolled her eyes), she put the earrings back and closed the safety deposit box. “Very well, if you insist.”

“Did I say anything?”

“You were giving me that look. I know that look well, you buzzkill.” Carina discarded the thumb-sheath into her purse, picked up another, and hit up a second deposit box, which of course made Mr. Faisal whimper. But the redhead wrinkled her nose. “Paperwork. Uch.”

“Some of it’s probably important,” Sarah said.

Carina shook her head. “Bor-ing.”

Apparently, that broke the unfortunate Mr. Faisal. “Please, please, I have money—money of my own—I will give you whatever you want—”

Carina and Sarah exchanged looks. “Pass,” Sarah said, and hauled the bank employee to his feet. “C’mon, Solnyshko, now we use one of your pretty thumbs, yes? Which one, do you think?” The last bit was directed at Carina as she nodded at the back wall of safety deposit boxes.

Carina pursed her lips and studied the row. “That one,” she said, pointing.

“Good choice.” Sarah dragged the sweating Mr. Faisal over. “Thumb, please.”

“Please, I could make you rich, I wouldn’t even tell the police—”

“Thumb. Now.”

Though the man continued to babble, the fact that Sarah’s fake gun was pressed against his temple won out, and he put his thumb against the scanner. The light once again turned from red to green. “See?” Sarah asked him. “That wasn’t hard. Now…”

She chopped her free hand down on the side of his neck, calmly and efficiently knocking him unconscious. The man collapsed to the ground in a boneless pile. Sarah gritted her teeth. “Carina!”

“What?”

“You were supposed to  _catch_ him.”

“He got a little too handsy with stripper me. He deserves it.”

Sarah continued to glare.

“Whatever,” Carina said, rolling her eyes. “I’ll help you move him. See what an awesome bank heist partner I am?”

“Why don’t you focus on opening all of the other boxes we agreed on, and I’ll move the body, hmm?”

“Buzzkill,” Carina said a second time, but she moved on to the next deposit box. It had taken them nearly two weeks to collect thumb prints from each of the employees with access to the vault, and the sleeves had cost them a pretty penny to manufacture. If all went well, the bank would come to find that five safety deposit boxes had been accessed during the time when the cameras went dark, but none of them would actually be missing anything.

If it worked, it was going to be a brilliant plan.

Their desired box was the fourth one Carina opened. Sarah watched the other woman out of the corner of her eye as she swiftly replaced a small envelope and a thumb drive inside the box and closed the little door. “What’s your favorite number?” Carina asked as she studied the left wall of the room.

A sequence of eight numbers flashed through Sarah’s mind, but she said, “Twelve” because that seemed like as good a number as any.

“Good choice.” Carina used the final sleeve to open safety deposit box number twelve. “Uh…you might want to see this.”

“We’re not actually taking anything from that box. Close it and let’s get out of here before we’re caught.”

“No, seriously, you need to see this.”

Sarah sighed and crossed the room to her partner. “What on earth could be so important that—holy hell. Is that…”

“Yeah. Yeah, pretty much.”

Sarah stared at the severed hand, perfectly preserved, inside the box. Even as most of her wanted to recoil, the analytical spy side of her brain pointed out that the cut was perfectly surgical, which meant that somebody skilled had sliced off the hand.

“Do we even want to know?” Carina asked.

Before Sarah could think of a reply, all of the lights on the thumbprint scanners began to flash at once, making both women jump. The lights went from green to red and back, three times short, three times long, three times—

“Crap, that’s SOS, we’re blown,” Sarah said, and headed for the door. Adrenaline began to flood through her system, making the weird severed hand in the box very much not her problem anymore. She wiped the gun of her fingerprints and tossed it in the wastepaper basket, as having a theater prop would do nothing but get her shot. Carina followed a few seconds later, doing exactly the same thing. “Ready?”

“Let’s do this.”

They’d discussed every contingency—and Sarah had reviewed each four times to make sure there weren’t any loopholes for Carina—so when Sarah hit the door, she made a left. It led deeper into the belly of the bank and the guards wouldn’t expect that from them.

Ahead of them in the hallway, there was a screen mounted on the wall. It flashed with a smiley face icon, and Sarah understood: Chuck had taken it upon himself to guide them out. He was supposed to be removing all traces of his hacking from the bank systems. She should yell at him for that, but she couldn’t help but feel relief. She had an ally again.

“This way!” she said, running toward the screen.

“How the hell do you know that—oh.” Carina spotted the screen herself, for she fell silent. They were unarmed, carrying stolen property through the middle of a bank, and to make matters worse, they were dressed very, very obviously. This was not going to be an easy escape.

The hallway hit a T-junction. Sarah skidded to a halt, looking about, and spotted the screen with the smiley face to her right. She took off in that direction.

“You must really,  _really_  trust this guy,” Carina said. Behind them, they could hear shouts as the rest of the bank became aware that there were intruders.

“He’s the best at what he does,” Sarah said. They hooked a left at the next corner.

“Who the hell is he?”

“I heard him call himself Mr. Wizard once. Does that help?”

“You don’t even know who Mr. Wizard is.” Carina sounded disgusted. “And for the record, I’m not calling Bunker Boy that.”

“Suit yourself.” Sarah took a corner too sharply, a glancing blow to the shoulder, and winced as she continued to sprint. At least Carina was the only one who’d seen that, and Sarah could always bring up the myriad times Carina had slipped up on missions if the redhead was going to taunt her for making such a rookie mistake. “I think he’d actually prefer Mr. Wizard to Bunker Boy.”

“So I’ll call him Bunker Boy forever. Got it.”

“Whatever.” They rounded a corner and Sarah had only a split-second to read the screen on the wall, which read “DUCK!” in huge letters. She threw herself forward into a roll even as Carina slid toward home plate, and two security guards rounded the corner. They only had time to look down at the women before Sarah hit the first with a low kick to the side of the knee. Carina disabled the second by sweeping his legs out from under him and elbowing him viciously in the temple.

Wordlessly, they grabbed the two Jericho handguns and kept running. The next screen said, “Niiiiiice” before it flashed to a smile, leading them further into the labyrinth of tunnels.

Carina rolled her eyes at that one, but Sarah noticed that she didn’t actively complain.

“Now’s where it gets fun,” she said when they finally arrived at the location they’d marked as Destination Echo. “You first.”

“No, no, I insist, after you.”

“Now’s not the time to get polite, _golubka_. In you go.” Sarah grabbed the chute at waist-height in the wall and pulled it open with a firm yank. There was a kitchen underneath the bank and they sent their dirty linens through a laundry chute—an oversight in the blueprints that Sarah and Carina were very much looking forward to exploiting. Sarah grabbed a handful of Carina’s dress and shoved her friend inside, practically leaping in behind her. She whirled and pulled the chute door closed.

Just in time, too. The minute the door slid shut, two guards rounded the corner and raced by. Carina and Sarah froze. Sarah didn’t dare so much as breathe, though her heartbeat pounded loudly in her ears, so loudly that it amazed her that the guards couldn’t hear it.

They ran past, none the wiser, and Sarah breathed again. She nudged Carina with her shoulder.

“Should’ve known you wanted me to go first so you could check out my ass,” Carina said.

“What can I say? I’m completely transparent to you.” Sarah rolled her eyes.

“Uh,” Carina said after a minute of crawling. “If this is for linens, shouldn’t there be, like, a drop?”

“Dammit, you’re right.” Sarah wracked her brain, but she couldn’t remember an extensive tunnel of ducts in the blueprints. Otherwise she would have memorized that sucker. “Dammit,” she said again. “I’m not sure how to get us out of here.”

“Well, we might as well go forward.” Carina gave a bouncy little shrug and began to crawl again. “Any bright ideas?”

“Start counting feet. Let’s see how much of that spatial relations training from the Point stuck.”

“Aye-aye, Captain Walker.” Carina tossed her a salute, and they crawled on through the ducts, occasionally pausing to sneeze or reconsider. It was dusty and cramped, but Sarah had been through worse at Quantico alone, so she didn’t complain, not even when it felt like the metal walls around her were beginning to close in.

That, however, did not stop Carina. “This is ridiculous,” she said, crawling forward on her elbows and knees.

“Just keep moving,” Sarah said, and tried not to think about how close everything felt now, and how little oxygen there seemed to be in the ducts.

“Can’t Bunker Boy do something about this?”

“Do what, Carina? He’s got no way to reach us in here.”

“If he really was the magical Mr. Wizard you say he is, he’d have come up with a solution by—oh, never mind, I take it back. Remind me to buy Bunker Boy a drink.”

“What?” Sarah raised herself up, but she couldn’t see anything but Carina. “What is it?”

“There’s an access panel ahead and the lights are blinking. Morse code. Clever.”

“What’s he saying?” Morse code. That was Chuck through and through. Sarah couldn’t help but be impressed. 

“Hold your horses, Walker, I’m trying to—make a left.” Carina said the words very slowly, and Sarah was grateful for all of the times their instructors had pounded learning Morse code into their heads in training. “Fifty feet ahead, turn right. There is a slide—a slide? Seriously?”

“That was how we were getting out of here originally, wasn’t it?” Sarah asked.

“I hate this whole day,” Carina said. “But according to your tech wizard, the slide leads out to street level. I don’t even want to know what it’s used for. Ready to go?”

“Wish there was a way to get a message back to him.”

“Keep it in your pants, Walker.” Carina sounded amused as she began to shuffle forward, making the left at the access panel as instructed. “I have to hand it to him, though. This deserves at least a handjob.”

“Don’t be crude, Carina.”

“Aw, but then how will you know I’m serious?”

“I’ll manage,” Sarah said, her voice completely dry. Crawling the fifty feet, knowing that they might make some noise to alert security to their presence, made sweat ooze between her shoulder blades, but she pushed herself forward, gritting her teeth. Finally, they reached the junction Chuck had instructed them to find, and Carina made the right turn—and vanished.

Sarah nearly shouted. Her limited night vision showed an abrupt decline with no warning. It was a miracle that Carina hadn’t even so much as shouted. Sarah swore under her breath, maneuvered so that she would go down feet first, and let herself drop.

It was nothing at all like a playground slide. After all, those were slow, short, and usually used in broad daylight. It was pitch black, leaving Sarah with nothing but the sharp feeling of acceleration in her belly and the heat of the slide at her back. She wriggled, trying to slow her descent even as she counted in her head.

No such luck. At twelve seconds, she crashed feet-first into Carina.

“Ow!”

“Shh!”

Both women stilled. The slide had deposited them in some kind of collection bay. Sarah couldn’t precisely tell what sort of room it was, actually, save that it was small—she couldn’t rise to her full height—and there was only a single exit to the right through a low doorway. Sunlight streamed in from the doorway and from grates in the wall directly ahead of them, which, along with the stifling heat, told her they were close to the outside wall. 

She eyed the exit and then the grates. With a shrug, Carina grabbed a multitool from her purse and set to work on the screws holding the grate covers to the wall. They had no idea what could be waiting for them around that corner, but if they climbed through the grate, they had at least the element of surprise, what little that mattered with only the stolen guns and their faces bared for the world to see.

“Got it?” Carina asked, and Sarah wrapped her fingers in the vent slits on the grate, nodding. “This is the last screw. Are you sure?”

“I’ve got it. Get on with it.”

“Pushy, pushy. You know, if this works…”

“Worry about that later. Unscrew now.”

“I wish that was ‘screw now.’”

“Trust me, I got that memo. A month ago.”

Carina finally finished with the last screw and it nearly sliced Sarah’s fingers to ribbons to hold onto the grate, but she kept her grip. She lowered it minutely for Carina to get a good look outside. “What do you see?” she asked.

“Loading bay. Lunch break’s still in effect. We might actually have a chance.”

“You go first. I’ll cover you,” Sarah said. She counted to three before she lowered the grate. The redhead slithered through, propping her hat on her head like a proper lady. When she looked over her shoulder to nod at Sarah, the spy followed.

Heat hit like a fist. “Next mission, we’re going to a temperate climate,” Sarah said between her teeth as they headed into the bay full of bank vans and trucks. Since they had no idea if the bank had regained use of its security cameras, they tried to avoid most of the cameras in the bay, but it wasn’t easy.

Even worse than that was the fact that to get out of the bay, they had to go by a guard’s way-station.

“Ideas?” Sarah asked as they crouched behind a truck, eyeing the three guards inside the office.

“Shoot ’em?”

“Too loud.”

“Fine. You do the can-can, I’ll do the Charleston, and we get by on our wits?”

Sarah decided it was better for both if she just tuned Carina out. She crouched out of the range of the cameras, watching the guards. One was barking into his phone while the other two typed away frantically at their computer terminals. As she watched, the one on the phone slammed the receiver down and gestured emphatically at his cohorts.

They all tumbled out of the booth, taking off running the direction opposite Carina and Sarah.

“Uh,” Carina said. “What just happened?”

Sarah needed only to see that the computer terminals now all bore smiley faces. “Looks like Mr. Wizard struck again,” she said, and grabbing Carina’s arm, hauled her friend out of there. They hurried out of the bank and wasted absolutely no time blending into the midday foot traffic on the street outside.

It took nine blocks for Sarah’s heart to finally stop racing. They’d done it. Now she just had to get them to the new hotel in one piece before Carina got bored and double-crossed her.

 **26 APRIL 2006**  
  **DAYS INN HOTEL**  
  **21:29 AST**

Carina finally collapsed back onto one of the room’s double beds with a sigh. “It ain’t the Desert Jewel, that’s for sure,” she said, eyeing the accommodations somewhat disdainfully—which was more than a little unfair, Sarah felt, as they’d nearly frozen to death in a hovel outside of Anchorage for a mission a year before. Compared to that dung-hole, anything with room service was considered high class.

Granted, they’d just spent the past month living like queens in one of Dubai’s finest hotels, so maybe Sarah should go a little easier on her partner. She rose and headed over to where they’d stashed a bottle of champagne in the room’s cheap ice bucket. “What time is our flight out in the morning?” she asked.

“Early, but I don’t care. You’re not the only one who wants to escape this hell, Walker.”

Sarah grabbed a washcloth to pop the bottle. “Where to next?”

“I dunno. Wherever the DEA wants to send us on our first mission.”

“Wait, first mission?” Sarah swiveled in place, eyes narrowed. “We just finished our first mission, Carina. Damn near flawlessly, if I do say so myself.”

The redhead at least had the grace to wince as she slowly sat up. “Yeah, about that…”

Sarah’s sense of danger began to beep in the back of her head. “Carina,” she said, glaring.

“This may not have entirely been a DEA-sanctioned mission. Just so you know. I mean, they would have sanctioned it.” Carina thought about it. “If they knew.”

Sarah set the bottle of champagne down with an audible  _clunk_. “Carina,” she said a second time. She’d gotten Chuck’s help on an unsanctioned mission. If he got in trouble because of this… “What did you do?”

“Relax, Walker, it’s totally fine.”

“I’m going to kick your ass.”

“You could try.”

“It wasn’t just me this time, Carina!” Sarah whirled on her friend, anger actually making the edges of her vision sparkle with white. “Dammit, my contact—”

“Is in no trouble whatsoever. Geez, what do you think I am, a rookie? I cleared it, sorta, with my boss. Nothing’s gonna blow back on any of us, Walker.” Carina rolled her eyes again, and it made Sarah want to kick her in the face. She refrained only because the hotel room was too nice and she didn’t want to try and find a new place after they destroyed this one. They were supposed to be flying under the radar.

So she took a deep breath, and another. When she spoke, her voice was so eerily calm that Carina eyed her. “So what was it, then? What was in that vault that we retrieved?”

“Oh, some pictures.” Carina waved a flippant hand.

“Pictures of what?” Sarah forced the words out through gritted teeth.

Carina stared at her for a long time. “Wow, you’re really pissed.”

“You think?”

“Look, somebody got some…incriminating pictures of me a few months ago.”

This time it was Sarah’s turn to stare, and stare, and to keep staring when that failed to register. It finally did, though it took a minute for the full implication of everything to hit her. She groaned and sat down hard on the edge of the bed. 

“Oh, my God!” she said. “Carina, that’s—that’s it? Incriminating photos? For God’s sake,  _I_  have incriminating photos of you from New Year’s! Most of the DEA probably does, too.”

“Really?” Carina tilted her head. “What of? Was it me with the blond? Because I can explain that. He was just trying to—”

“I am not hearing this,” Sarah said as she got to her feet and stalked toward the door. 

“I thought friends had each other’s backs.”

“To the point of robbing a bank in Dubai for some _pictures_? Carina—”

Carina grabbed her arm, stopping her before she could head for the door. “Look,” she said. “If those pictures get up the chain, it’s—it’s bad, okay? I needed somebody I could trust.”

For a long time, Sarah met her friend’s eyes, but she was furious, so angry that the edges of her vision were still quaking and she could feel her hands trembling. She might not have minded if it was just her—Lord knew she was in enough trouble with the CIA over the fallout with Bryce—but for Carina to drag Chuck into it was just too much.

Even so, she recognized that look on her friend’s face. Carina was being completely sincere, for once.

“Dammit,” Sarah said for the fiftieth time that day. “I hate you.”

Carina relaxed. “I hate you, too.”

“I’m going to go. I need to cool off. These pictures had better mean as much to you as you say they do.”

“Scout’s honor, Walker.”

“Shut up,” Sarah said, and stalked out of the room.

She took a minute in the hallway to compose herself, collect her temper, rein her anger in. Whatever was in those photos was deathly important to Carina, so it must be something huge. But she did  _not_  like being lied to, when she had stuck her neck—and Chuck’s neck, too—out for her friend. It hurt, like a knife to the ribcage.

She wanted most of all to call Chuck and vent her anger to him, but the orders were clear: once the mission was completed, there was to be no contact. She was considered DEA property, he was CIA, they were done.

Sarah didn’t like that. She didn’t like knowing that Chuck had saved their asses—for an unsanctioned mission—without hearing a single word from them. And she wanted to call him and thank him, or apologize or something, but there were orders, and the last time she had unwittingly broken those orders, there had been severe consequences.

Still, she found herself pulling out her phone and sending a simple message to his email. Two words:  _thank you_. It was enough to keep her out of trouble, she thought, as there wasn’t a hidden code or anything the bosses would frown upon.

It made her feel calmer, at least. It wasn’t much, but she’d learned to make do with what she had. He was probably asleep now, but he’d get it in the morning, and he’d know things were okay. It was enough for now. As she was heading off to take her walk, though, her phone chimed with a reply email. 

It was just as simple: a smiley face from Chuck. Silly, Sarah thought, that three little characters put together in that order could drain every ounce of anger she felt toward Carina away. God, she was a goner.

She put the phone away and headed back to the hotel room, head clearer. Carina looked surprised to see her there, but the other woman held up a glass of champagne. “That was quick, Walker,” Carina said. “No, sorry. That’s wrong. That was quick,  _Sarah_.”

“I got over it,” Sarah said, and took the champagne with a nodded thank you. “But don’t you ever pull something like that again.”

“Oh, fine,” Carina said. She let out a long, melodramatic sigh. “Have we made up yet?”

“After you show me these pictures, yes.”

“Very well. But first, a toast. To us, the baddest badass spies on the planet.”

“To us,” Sarah said, and clinked her glass to Carina’s. 


End file.
